Add commands to your presentation with action buttons

Use action buttons to cue or launch an action in your presentation, such as go to the next or a specific slide, run a program or play a video clip. Pick an action button from the Shapes gallery, and then assign an action to occur when you click your mouse or when someone moves their mouse over the button.

The idea is that when you deliver your presentation, you can click or mouse over an action button to:

Go to the next slide, the previous slide, the first slide, the last slide, the most recent slide viewed, a specific slide number, a different Microsoft Office PowerPoint presentation, or a Web page.

Run a program

Run a macro

Play an audio clip

Some examples of built-in action button shapes that you can find in the Shapes gallery include right and left arrows, commonly understood symbols for going to next, previous, first, and last slides, for playing videos or sound bites, and more.

Tip: Action buttons provide great visual cues to the action it launches, but you can also assign actions to other objects, such as clip art, pictures, general shapes, or to the text in a SmartArt graphic. Use the procedure below to add an action to those objects as well.

On the Insert tab, in the Illustrations group, click Shapes, and then under Action Buttons, click the button shape that you want to add.

Click a location on the slide, and then drag to draw the shape for the button.

In the Action Settings dialog box, do one of the following:

To choose the behavior of the action button when you click it in Slide Show view, click the Mouse Click tab.

To choose the behavior of the action button when you move the pointer over it in Slide Show view, click the Mouse Over tab.

Add a button shape, and then assign an action (in this case, a hyperlink)

To choose the action that will take place when you click or move the pointer over the action button, do one of the following:

Choose None to use the shape without a corresponding action.

Choose Hyperlink to and then select the destination (for example, the next slide, the previous slide, the last slide, or another PowerPoint presentation) that you want the hyperlink action to go to.

Note: To link to a file created by another program, such as a Microsoft Office Word or Microsoft Office Excel file, in the Hyperlink to list, click Other File.

Choose Run program, then click Browse to locate the program that you want to run.

Choose Run macro and then select the macro that you want to run.

Note: The Run macro settings are available only if your presentation contains a macro, and when you save the presentation, you must save it as a PowerPoint Macro-enabled Show. For more information about macros, see Run a macro.

If you want the shape that you chose as an action button to perform an action, click Object action, and then select the action that you want it to perform.

Note: The Object action settings are available only if your presentation contains an OLE object.

To play a sound, select the Play sound check box, and then select the sound that you want to play.